


The End

by Maxim98rus



Category: Christian Bible, Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Apocalypse, Dark, End of the World, Female Protagonist, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Humanity regrets about everything, Memories, No Dialogue, Not So Biblical Apocalypse, Post-Apocalypse, Religious Guilt, Satan Wins In This Universe, Self-Hatred, Self-Reflection, but it's too late to repent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25483084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maxim98rus/pseuds/Maxim98rus
Summary: What would happen if Satan wins?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	The End

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Конец](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24978136) by [Maxim98rus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maxim98rus/pseuds/Maxim98rus). 



> It's my FIRST attempt to write something in English. I'm still learning, okay? I just hope it wasn't as bad as I think...

It’s cold today. Maybe she should’ve to take a jacket, but she doesn’t care. Denim material is torn and has holes for a long time. That’s won’t save her from piercing wind.

Her footsteps echo throughout the empty corridor. Each footfall sounds for all the world like a dozen as if she's not treading through the dark alone. She’s not sure that’s not true. She’s not sure of anything at all anymore.

A row of identical lamps protected by gratings suggests the way out. Dim light hardly dispels the gloom, making its way through the glass stained with mud and dried blood. From time to time the old wiring sparks and the light goes out for a second or two. Looks like there will be no electricity ever before the generator runs out of fuel.

She checks if a handgun and rifle are loaded. Neither of it gonna help her if she’ll face something stronger than zombies but she’d feel better at least. She doesn’t think about suicide for a long time. None of them doesn’t. Not over those times.

The door is hidden within a natural cave a mile off the main road. She taps her security code on autopilot and doesn’t even look at cracked, tarnished terminal screen. Massive, rusted doors are moving slowly out aside and she goes outside.

It’s not dawn yet, but the blood-red light is rising slowly above the horizon. The air is dry; she could feel the dust is clogging up in her nose. Her eyes squint because of that. A barren desert is before her everywhere she looks. Fertile soil has long gone under the blows of water and wind. Now there’s nothing except dry cracked ground and sand. Dark brown clouds seem to be heavy and slowly float across the sky.

She climbs up on a small rocky ledge and sits down, trying to get herself as comfortable as possible. Tired eyes look indifferently at the wasteland that surrounds her. Somewhere far on the horizon, she can see the silhouette of what was once a city in the blur of sand haze. Now it’s nothing more than crumbling ruins under crimson skies. The life that once flowed there withered away a long time ago; only rusted shells of cars on cracked, collapsed highways or bridges and abandoned houses full of long decayed corpses remind of it.

She would have lit a cigarette before but had to quit. There are no cigarettes anymore.

The woman sitting on the rocks withdraws deeper and deeper into her shell but meanwhile listens carefully. No, nothing. Only the whistle of the wind and the rustle of sandy drifts that almost completely buried the once wide and noisy highway under itself. There are not even walking dead which were enough in any corner of the planet even in such a wilderness as this one. But she’s grateful even now because at least for a moment she can pretend that her life is normal or at least its likeness.

She doesn't know why she all the time goes outside until dawn when the sun that now looks more like a clot of boiling blood begins to slowly rise above the horizon. It seems to be just a habit. She also was going out like that when Makoto was gone; she just silently looked far ahead with an empty gaze as if hoping that one day by some miracle he return to her. She hoped even after seeing with her own eyes how the coffin with his lifeless body was lowered into the grave. She who all her youth preached that death is forever, that this is the end of everything at all, that it is one endless “nothing”.

The woman snorts. She was a fool. And the sky was still blue then – not red.

Everyone saw him as a freak; he was a frail and feeble boy with black hair falling on his forehead and dark gray eyes full of despair. It never surprised her because he always babbled about God, about heaven, about hell, about sin and salvation... She was mostly just rolling her eyes; seriously it was really dumb to tell that fairy tales in the 21st century. They cloned a human after all; they colonized a Moon and landed on Mars! But at least she respected him which had not been the case with others.

He even tried to attempt suicide one day and then she saved him.

The woman recovers when she feels a tear is rolling down her cheek and irritably wipes it with her palm. Water is so scarce, no reason to waste it.

She squints again when the sun comes up as if frozen with eternal dawn; it’s dark red rays illuminate the barren land with bloody shining and fall on her face turning it in the flaming smudge. The gloom of night is clearing and skies slowly turn into a victorious scarlet fire but the sun’s shining not so bright as she remembers. She can look at him now but earlier it blinded her eyes.

The woman shivers and pulls the camouflage scarf mask up to cover her mouth and nose. The wind gets stronger at dawn and she squints trying to protect her eyes from flying grains of sand. Perhaps there will be a dust storm today – the wind gusts that get deep to the bones are much stronger than usual.

She looks at the dead world spreading before her eyes. There only five of them left; they all are down there in a dirty filthy bunker in which life will become impossible in a couple of days. There is a great lack of water and the day when she has at least something to eat is rightly regarded as lucky. Fuel will run out soon but it seems that the life-support system will shut down even before that. And then they wouldn't have other choices except for Hell after death or hell on Earth. Honestly, she had no idea how in that case to choose the lesser of two evils if both of them are equally bad.

She wonders sometimes if there still at least anything is worth fighting for.

She thought about Makoto again, remembered these last three months when she perhaps was truly happy – she loved him and he apparently loved her. She remembered how shocked the whole Academy was when people around found out about their relationships. Potential PhD dates with religious nut! But she didn’t care although he tried to convey to her what he believed was the “truth”. After all, even he began to respect her feelings. Now she thinks that he most likely just gave up and considered her to be hopeless; and he was right. Yeah… The most offensive thing was the realization that all these few morons who preached on the streets with that ancient books in their hands were right all along. 

Maybe if she had listened to what he was telling her she wouldn’t lose him. Maybe she just can’t stop blaming herself. She doesn’t know. 

She’d been watching people was dying around her in thousands of horror ways for the last two years. Some were lucky enough to don't have time even to scream; others had fate compared to which death was a mercy. But whenever she closed her tired eyes when lying on a dirty mattress she saw how Makoto died in her arms. She remembered his wounded tormented body bled out; she remembered he writhed in agony and clung in despair to a life that slowly leaves him. She remembered her eyes blurred by tears so that she didn’t see anything and only was trembling with hysteria while trying to help him in vain although her mind clearly told her that it was too late to help.

He wasn’t the only one who died on that day, but also she herself. How does it feel when you know that all your beliefs, all you thought was just, necessary or truth, fell apart before your eyes like a house of cards? How does it feel when you understand that all your life was a lie that you were deluding yourself and others while your beliefs now are worth nothing? How does it feel when that what seemed an ancient shadow of the past suddenly became visible, real, and with sadistic pleasure took away from you everything you're ever loved? Maybe she should’ve listened to him before – maybe _they all_ should’ve listened to him before; him and all those who told the same word that she waved off along with all progressive humanity. And now there was no progressive humanity. There was no humanity _at all_. Because it was too late. It was too late for them all. 

All she sees now is remains of once proud and majestic civilization thought that there was nothing it couldn’t do. Only once beautiful Blue Planet which now nothing more than a dim gray ball of dry mud that can dispel from a simple whiff. Only dying sun and blood skies that are silent reminders about what happened. 

The woman pulls out of pocket a small battered book once belonged to him. The cover is almost ripped off and pale letters “Holy Bible” are lost its gilt and almost unseen. She flips the old faded pages until finds one verse that touched her then to the core: _“And except those days should be shortened, there should **no flesh be saved** : but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.”_ It seems like it was the Gospel of Matthew. Only then she understood what happened.

 _“…but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.”_ Maybe the other worlds, universes, whatever – if they exist, – were luckier than her own. Maybe there still were people that could be saved. But in her own world, no one “elects” left and only one who she knew was “elect”... he was dead. His body locked in the coffin was put in the moist soil in Otsu, the city in which he was born and grew up; she saw that. She remembered how beautiful sunset was on that day; the most bright red and pink colors she's ever seen. It made her angry then; how _dare_ the sky to be clear and full of sunlight when must be dark clouds and rain that mourn her loss! Let it be stupid and dramatic, let it be like in the cheap movies – she didn't care! But birds sang in the sky, the wind blew and the leaves rustled... As if Makoto didn't die, as if his life didn't matter. 

Maybe that was the truth that neither she, neither anyone didn't want to accept; that their lives _never were matter_ at all.

Makoto once said that all people were “children of God”. If that was true she can admit that they were horrible “children”. They were arrogant and ungrateful, proud and selfish; they were cruel to each other, to themselves, to the planet itself. They were rebelling against Creation, again and again, they reveled in their own mind and power, they dreamed about the Universe that will belong to them. They were liars and hypocrites, they justified violence, greed, and other abominations that created themselves. They even dared think they were “innocent” and “good” as if not saw the darkness that filled their corrupted souls! And so century after century, millennium after millennium… 

She probably would've given up earlier but it seems after all that even God understood that it was too late to try to save anyone. Because no one wanted to be saved anymore. How can a doctor cure a disease if a patient refuses to follow his recommendations? How can a rescue swimmer save a drowning man that refuses to grab an outstretched hand? They knew so little about the Universe, the planet on which they lived, and even about themselves but were sure their knowledge was enough. All their civilization was built on bones, blood, and gold but they were sure that can judge what's right and what's wrong, what's “good” and what's “evil” for themselves. And then God just like a real father looked at His rebellious son that yelled he doesn't need Him and said with sighs: “Thy will be done”. 

And slammed the door behind his back.

Therefore, when the demons rose from Hell and lashed out at humanity no one came to aid.

Maybe they deserved it all. He at least took from the Earth all those who really wasn't guilty of anything – all little children and babies even those who were in the wombs of their mothers.

Well, thanks for that.

At first of course no one didn't even understand what they all faced. They remembered DOOM, “Salvation War” and all that sort of nonsense; draw cartoons with scared devils that screamed in horror while laughing pilots dropped bombs on them. Maybe they really thought that all would happen so and not otherwise. She didn't know and didn't _want_ to know. She lost any will to live when Makoto's child that she carried was gone up to Heaven right from her womb.

The doctor said it was a little boy.

A couple of days after the beginning of the war there became no laughing matter. It turned out suddenly that demons weren't big scary devils with red skin, horns, hooves, bat-like wings, and pointed tails. They were much scarier; something that was making everybody who saw them screamed in terror and ripped their own eyes. Oh, and bullets weren't hurt them. As well as mines, grenades, HEAT warheads... After all, they dropped a nuclear bomb on the largest number of imps in despair. _Nothing_.

The contact with colonies on Moon and Mars was lost almost immediately after the invasion. She tried not to think about what happened with all these “pioneers of space” many of which never were on Earth and definitely didn't know who is the devil. Their fate does not seem to be better than what’s happened with the rest of humanity.

It got worse when it turned out that demons can possess people. Possessed didn't shout curses in unknown languages, didn't shake, didn't bend their bodies in the strange forms, and even didn't fly – in general, they didn't anything of those what they usually did in the horror movies. Their friends and relatives instead could don't even notice that they were talking with a puppet – and when they were turning out how things really were it was too late. Demons could've wait days or even weeks to strike from behind and they've struck there nobody expected and when nobody expected. 

The propaganda was convincing that all was under control, that enormous losses that turned to be irreparable are nothing more than regrettable plan mistakes and that endless retreat is going to end soon. Cities were still crowded and noisy, but she saw sadness and fear behind that. Possessed people were imagined on all sides; everyone suspected and feared his own friend, colleague, or relative... The paranoia became so strong that many of them murdered perfectly ordinary people taking them as demons – and true demons were only happy about that. 


End file.
